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Former premier of Italy Giulio Andreotti is surrounded by reporters as he arrives at court in Perugia
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ROME,
November 18 (News Agencies) - Former Italian prime minister Giulio
Andreotti, who has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for complicity
in the 1979 murder of a journalist, denied on Monday, November 18, he
had anything to do with the killing.
"It's
a very strange murder whose perpetrator can no longer be found,"
Andreotti told public radio network RAI.
He
said he had been taken aback by the court ruling on Sunday, November
17, which provoked stunned reactions from Italian politicians and the
media, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"I
have faith in the legal system... I always have. But yesterday's
decision takes my breath away," he told RAI.
The
83-year-old Andreotti, a pillar of Italy's post-war political scene
who was prime minister seven times and is now a senator for life, has
consistently denied involvement in the murder.
He
was convicted on Sunday by the appeals court in Perugia, central
Italy, of complicity in the murder of Mino Pecorelli, a journalist who
had been about to publish damaging information about him. The court
also barred him from holding public office for life.
Andreotti
had been acquitted of the charges three years ago, but the public
prosecutor's office in Perugia successfully appealed against the
verdict. Pecorelli's killer or killers have never been caught.
The
court also sentenced Mafia mobster Gaetano Badalmenti to 24 years in
connection with the killing.
The
Italian press on Monday echoed the stupefaction already voiced by
senior politicians, including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who
said Andreotti was "the victim of mad justice". Berlusconi
himself is on trial for false accounting and corrupting magistrates.
Fiat
group newspaper La Stampa deplored the "zig-zags" of the
Italian justice system and the "hiccups of the courts",
while centre-left La Republica, hardly a supporter of Andreotti's
Christian democrat views, said the verdict was a "surprise".
Corriere
della Sera, the country's top selling paper, said the ruling would
have to be respected but was "disconcerting... troubling... (and)
unconvincing".
Franco
Coppi, a lawyer for Andreotti, announced in Corriere dela Sera that
his defense team would appeal as soon as it had the details of
Sunday's judgment, which could take three months to be published.
"That
way we might discover why the 'killers' who acted for Mr Andreotti
were acquitted," Coppi wrote.
As
a senator for life since 1991, the 83-year-old Andreotti is protected
by parliamentary immunity, and judicial sources said his advanced age
would in any event spare him from going to jail. They said at the most
he would be placed under house arrest.
The
court acquitted four others: Giuseppe Calo, Claudio Vitalone, Massimo
Carminati and Micheangelo La Barbera.
Andreotti's lawyers could appeal the decision to the Supreme Court
once the Perugia court has released details of its decision, due
within 90 days.
"It's
madness, there is no other way to describe this sentence," said
one of Andreotti's lawyers, Gioacchino Sbacchi.
Berlusconi
accused "politicized" sections of the judiciary of seeking
to "change the course of democratic politics and rewrite the
history of Italy."
Cardinal
Achille Sivestrini, a friend of Andreotti, said the sentence
"seems impossible".
"Nobody could have predicted such a thing. I feel pain for him
and for his family," he told the Italian news agency Ansa.
Former Italian president and senator Oscar Luigi Scalfaro said:
"I cannot hide my concern, because I know Andreotti for 50 years
and I think it is unbelievable that he is responsible for such a
crime."
Leftist opposition Senator Stefano Passigli said: "A sentence
that condemns Andreotti as a sleeping partner while the executioners
have never been caught seems to me irrational."
Andreotti had been dubbed "Mr Italy" for his dominance of
Italy's post-war politics. He was seven times prime minister between
1972 and 1992 and 21 times a government minister.
With his slightly stooped figure and bespectacled, hangdog expression,
he is the country's most prominent elder statesman and its most
controversial public figure.
